Information Processing Techniques Office

The Information Processing Techniques Office (IPTO), originally "Command and Control Research," was part of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency of the United States Department of Defense.

J.C.R. Licklider, the first director 1962 to 1964, “...initiated three of the most important developments in information technology: the creation of computer science departments at several major universities, time-sharing, and networking.” By the late 1960s, his promotion of the concept had inspired a primitive version of his vision called ARPANET, which expanded into a network of networks in the 1970s that became the Internet.

The stated mission of IPTO was:

[To] create a new generation of computational and information systems that possess capabilities far beyond those of current systems. These cognitive systems - systems that know what they're doing:

Ivan Sutherland replaced J. C. R. Licklider as the head IPTO, when Licklider returned to MIT in 1964.Bob Taylor was hired as Sutherland's assistant in 1965 and became director in 1966.

During the time Bob Taylor was director the offices of IPTO consisted of a spacious office for the director in Ring D of The Pentagon and a small "terminal room" with remote terminals to mainframe computers at MIT, the University of California, Berkeley and the AN/FSQ-32 in Santa Monica. The staff at the Pentagon consisted of the director and his secretary. The budget was $19 million which funded computer research projects at MIT and other institutions in Massachusetts and California.

In 1966 Taylor went to ARPA, on Ring E, for funding to create a computer network that used interactive computing. He got $1 million and hired Lawrence Roberts to manage the project.

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